30 St Mary Axe, also known as the Gherkin and the Swiss Re Building, is a skyscraper in London's main financial district, the City of London, completed in December 2003 and opened on 28 April 2004. It is 180 metres (591 ft) tall, with 40 floors. Its construction symbolised the start of a new high-rise construction boom in London.
Architect : Norman Foster
Location : London, England, UK
Date : 2000 to 2004
Building Type : Commercial Office Tower, Skyscraper
Construction System : Glass Cladding
Climate : Temperate
Context : urban
Style : High Tech Modern
Following the detonation of the IRA bomb, English Heritage and the Corporation of London insisted that any redevelopment on the site must restore the building's facade onto St Mary Axe and the highly decorated Exchange Hall (formerly the trading floor of the exchange). The Baltic Exchange was unable to meet the financial requirements of such a development and the site was sold to Trafalgar House in 1995. Most of the remaining structures on the site were then carefully dismantled whilst the interior of Exchange Hall and the facade were preserved and sealed from the elements. Later assessment by English Heritage determined that the damage was far more severe than had previously been thought, and they dropped their insistence on restoration, a decision that led to much controversy.
Trafalgar House originally submitted plans for a 1,200 ft (370 m) tower building with a public viewing platform at exactly 1,000 feet (305 m) and more than 1 million square feet (90,000 m²) of office space. However this version of the plan was notable mainly for its highly unorthodox floorplan, which somewhat resembled a slice of gherkin (at least in the minds of sub-editors at The Guardian newspaper, who coined the term). Although this plan was abandoned the nickname has stuck. As well as its popular name of '
the Gherkin', it has also apparently been called 'the Erotic Gherkin' (the original Guardian coinage), '
the Crystal Phallus' and '
the Towering Innuendo'
On August 23, 2000, the Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott, granted planning permission to build a much larger building on the site. The new building was completed in 2004, opening on April 28, and was designed by the architects Foster and Partners . Its unusual cone-like shape is designed so that wind will pass easily around the building. The primary occupant of the building is Swiss Re reinsurers which leads to the building's other common name, the Swiss Re Tower. 30 St Mary Axe won the RIBA Stirling Prize for the best new building by a RIBA architect in 2004. It was the first time that the prize jury were unanimous in their decision.
The building uses several methods to make it more environmentally sound than a typical skyscraper. It uses 50% of the power of a comparable tower. This is achieved through a natural ventilation system which uses thermal effects to drive air circulation through the outer sheath of the tower, which is in effect giant double glazing. Double glazing in houses is limited in thickness to avoid convection of heat; in the Swiss Re tower, this effect is exploited. This cools in the summer, and can be regulated to warm in the winter through passive solar heating. Sunlight is reflected down through the tower, making the working environment more pleasing, and keeping lighting costs down.
Despite its overall curved glass shape, all the panes of glass are flat, with the sole exception of one – the lens-shaped cap at the very top.
On April 25, 2005, news reports revealed that one of glass panels of the tower (about 400ft up – two-thirds of the height of the tower) had fallen to the plaza beneath on April 18. The plaza was sealed off, but the building has remained open, with a temporary covered walkway extending across the plaza to the building's reception to protect visitors. Engineers began examining the other 744 glass panels of the building.
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